Is This The First Year The Love Island Favourites Won’t Actually Win?

This year’s Love Island has turned the dating show on its head. We’re just days away from the final on Monday night and with original islanders yet to completely win the nation over, latecomers stealing our hearts and contestants being forced to leave the villa, it looks like the winning couple may – for the first time – not actually be the favourites to win.

According to research by online gambling company BetVictor, Amber Gill is this year’s most popular contestant by far, with Ovie Soko coming in second and Tommy Fury, Maura Higgins and Yewande Biala taking up third, fourth and fifth place.

Based on Twitter data, the company compiled the list by tracking the volume of positive tweets for each contestant and found that Amber and Greg O’Shea are the favourites to win the ITV2 show. According to their analysis, the bottom three couples for the past two weeks have also been predicted using Twitter.

It’s no surprise really that Amber and Ovie are the nation’s favourites. Ovie – for obvious reasons – but Amber too for the monumental rollercoaster of a journey she’s had dealing with Michael Griffiths. Despite being cast as difficult (eye roll) from the start of the show, the ways she’s handled so much heartbreak – and chose to put herself first at the last recoupling – has clearly won viewers over.

But of course, we’ve watched Love Island long enough to know that it doesn’t matter how beloved you are by the public, the most long-standing couple typically always wins. Nathan Massey and Cara De La Hoyde, Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies, Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer– the one thing they all have in common is that they were together from the first week of the show.

For the most part, these couples have had the least tumultuous relationships, with these least amount of drama to keep viewers intrigued. In fact, there have been tons of favourites each year that viewers loved watching more; Olivia and Alex Bowen, Chris Hughes and Olivia Attwood, Megan Barton Hanson and Wes Nelson. And yet, despite the love viewers have for them and their just as strong commitments to each other, they never win.

It’s why many predicted Tommy and Molly-Mae to win weeks ago, because with Curtis Pritchard and Amy Hart out of the picture they had the longest relationship. Alas, with viewers still yet to warm to Molly-Mae it seems that they may break the Love Island mould.

Ultimately, we know our Love Island favourites will definitely not win given that they’re not a couple, but will Amber Gill be awarded the crown despite her relationship with Greg only lasting a week? It seems unlikely, but since producers chose to bin their long-standing rule that if you have to leave the show you’re gone for good for Greg – when he attended his nan’s funeral this week - maybe they have a better chance at winning than history would have you assume.

Honestly, at this point we’d rather they threw the rule book out the window and we all just voted for our favourite boy and girl, letting Ovie and Amber swipe the prize together. Let’s be honest, not only is friendship love more likely to last than romantic on this show, they genuinely seem to have the best connection out of the romantic couples anyway. Alas, our whimsical wishes aside, this year’s final is set to be one of the most intriguing in years

Read more: The best Twitter reactions to Love Island 2019...